BabyNurse513

Hi everyone, long time lurker here, have not posted in a long time but really need some advice. After 7 years of working in a Level 3 NICU I am applying for a job in L&D/High-RIsk OB. It has always been an interest of mine and I am excited abou...

Sorry about your situation. I used to work in that unit and unless it has changed drastically in the last couple of years I know how frustrating it is. They are horrible about pain management and there is no teamwork and a serious lack of support f...

I know this was brought up on another thread but try reading "Baby at Risk: The Uncertain Legacies of Medical Miracles for Babies, Families, and Society" by Ruth Levy Guyer.

I have worked in 3 NICU's, one in the midwest and 2 on the east coast. In my experiences they have all generally waited until we knew discharge was approaching and then we would remove all rolls, lay the head of the bed flat and put the baby on thie...

I think Miami Children's is the big NICU for that area. I had a friend who was a traveler there and from what I remember she liked it but that was 3 years ago.

We use bactroban in our NICU for MRSA colonization, i thought that was standard practice?

Generational Differences 1. What generation do you belong to? Generation X (born between 1961-1980) 2. How long have you been a nurse? 5 years 3. In your opinion what is your generation's strongest & weakest points (in te...

Out of curiosity how many beds is your unit? Level? How many nurses do you staff per shift?

Our visititation policy allows siblings of the baby to visit, regardless of age, (personally I don't agree with that but that is for another thread) and we take their temps all year round but no adult temps.

In my unit, we keep all infants less than 27 weeks midline for the first 7 days of life, vented or on CPAP, to prevent IVH.

Our holidays are paired in 3 groups. Memorial day and Thanksgiving, 4th of July and Christmas and Labor Day with New Years Eve. We rotate each year so this year I worked Labor day and New years, next year I will work Memorial day and Thanksgiving e...

I work in a 50 bed Level 3+ ECMO, Surgery etc. It is a Children's Hospital so we don't do deliveries. We usually have a charge nurse and a second charge nurse each shift that don't have assignments. The charge nurse tends to do more admin stuff, s...

None of the NICU's in Columbus take travelers. I was in your position a year and half ago. I personally called and spoke with the managers and none were interested in taking travelers so I ended up taking a staff position. If you would like info a...

Hi all. I am looking to design new bedside cards for our NICU. Actually we aren't using them at all right now but we just had 23 new grads start and think that we need them. So I am wondering if your unit uses them, why or why not, and what is on ...

Our policy is to flush all PIV's q8 with heparin. The only exception are the babies that are on ECMO.

We have 10units/1ml vials on our unit that we use for heplocking PIV's. If pharmacy stocked 10,000u/ml that could be a problem.

My current NICU and the last one I worked in seemed to think that all the handwashing we do and alcohol gel we use were fine and that an additional 3 min scrub was not necessary.

Clear fluids get changed q72, TPN/IL q day, all changed sterile No policy for scrubbing at start of shift for staff, visitors do have to scrub when they come in though. Every baby has thier own stethoscope Anything that touches the floor goes in th...

Is Dr. Wong going to be there, I heard he was ill?

I see you are from the suburbs of Philly. I don't know if you are looking at NICU's in Philly but I started as a new grad in the NICU at HUP and though I have since relocated I know for a fact that they still hire new grads and are hiring at the mo...

No not a Kardex. At the last 2 hospitals I worked at we had a small card taped to each baby's isolette or crib. In case of accidental extubation or code etc it had the baby's weight, ETT size, where it should be taped at, what depth we should be su...

Miami Children's has a great NICU, i believe it is the biggest NICU in Miami and takes the most acute patients.

Obviously the baby needs to be stable. We prefer the babes to be over a kilo but there are always exceptions. We usually start with a one hour limit and go from there. As they get bigger and more stable we will let mom kangaroo for the whole time ...

I worked there for a year and the housing is nearly impossible to get. In the year that I worked there, they never even called to tell me an apartment was available. Things may have changed, I worked there 5/04-5/05. I wasn't a new grad but I didn...

I have worked in 3 different NICU's and non of them have ever fed babies while they were getting indo, regardless of whether they were getting fed before the med was started. I have seen babies perf though that were getting indocin and never fed at ...